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ITV extends I’m A Celebrity episode featuring Farage’s ‘black accent’ row
Former Ukip leader shown butting heads with social media influencer Nella Rose after complaints that he had not been given enough air time
ITV extended an episode of I’m A Celebrity that featured a cultural appropriation row between Nigel Farage and Nella Rose after the broadcaster was accused of not giving him enough airtime.
Tuesday evening’s episode was extended by 15 minutes at the last minute amid a row between allies of the former Ukip leader and ITV over accusations that he is being censored on the hit reality show.
The clash with his fellow jungle campmate, YouTube star Rose, about “doing a black accent” followed the previous evening’s episode in which he appeared on-screen for less than a minute to declare that the jungle is “beautiful”.
A spokesman for the show has denied that Farage was being treated unfairly or differently to the other contestants, a few of whom have taunted him over his Brexit campaigning since his first appearance in the jungle.
The latest row saw the GB News presenter, 59, butting heads with the 26-year-old social media influencer during a heated exchange that was sparked from a conversation about the Jamaican pronunciation of “water” as “wata”.
Sitting around the campfire, Farage got involved in the exchange by telling television presenter Fred Sirieix: “If you sang that, they’d call it cultural appropriation Fred.”
The former politician went on to suggest that a white person could be “cancelled” if they “did a black accent”.
He said: “It’s when suits, they criticise when suits.”
When Rose asked what he meant, Farage replied: “If a white person does a black accent that’s considered to be a crime – that they should be cancelled for it.”
The YouTube star, 26, explained that it “depended on the context,” saying: “If you’re taking the p--- then you’re taking the p---. But if you’re not, then you’re not.”
Farage said: “It’s ‘you can’t win’ territory.” He then implied that if a person “dressed as Mexican” for a fancy dress party, the press would accuse him of cultural appropriation.
Rose said: “You can’t use somebody’s culture as a fancy dress costume. The Mexican outfit is traditional to them. It’s been in their culture for decades.”
“I do not know what the rules are, Nella. I do not know,” Farage responded. The debate appeared to end with Rose calling Farage “ignorant” and “deluded”.
‘Enormous confusion’
Speaking to the camera after the row, Farage said: “There just seems to be this most enormous confusion as to what you can and can’t do and what you can and can’t wear.
“To be honest with you, I’m no further forwards as to what’s acceptable and what’s not.”
Farage was previously accused of being “anti-immigrant” on the show by Rose, who claimed he wanted people like her “gone” from the UK.
The YouTube star explained that she had asked the former politician about the “problem” of immigration because she is “one of those numbers”, in a nod to her birth in Belgium to Congolese parents. She arrived in the UK in 2009.
The spat followed criticism by fellow jungle campmate Fred Sirieix that a poster, used by Farage when he was campaigning for the UK to leave the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum, was “shameful”.
Other contestants leave jungle
Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn Spears has become the second contestant to leave the show on medical grounds in a week.
Britney Spears’s younger sister, 32, departed the set on Wednesday afternoon but her final appearance will be on Wednesday night’s UK episode.
A show spokesman said: “Jamie Lynn Spears has left I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! on medical grounds.
“She’s been a fantastic campmate who has triumphed at trials and bonded well with her fellow celebrities.”
The news of Spears’s early departure follows an emotional appearance on Tuesday night, in which she was filmed breaking down in tears and trying to get through to her family in the red telephone box.
“I just needed a cry,” she told fellow contestants who were consoling her.
“I hate it here so much,” she said to herself while in the telephone box, adding: “This place is where people go to have the worst days of their lives. Dear God, please help me make it.”
She is then heard muttering: “I think I’ve got to leave, I think I’ve got to leave.”
Her departure comes just days after Grace Dent also quit the show early for medical reasons.
The restaurant critic, 50, told her fellow jungle campmates that her “heart is broken” after she left the set just over two weeks before the grand finale.